'The last thing you'd think'

If you had asked Jim and Cindy Emmons years ago if they thought their sons would someday be playing a concert at their hometown arena, they probably would have laughed.

“It was the last thing you’d think,” Cindy Emmons recalled as she awaited backstage for her sons’ band, The Glorious Sons, to perform at the sold-out Rogers K-Rock Centre. “I thought it was just for recreation and fun and that the band thing was going to pass. But it never did.”

“Whatever you think your kids are going to do, I would tell anybody that that’s not going to happen,” chuckled husband Jim, who said his boys were more interested in playing sports than music, at least early on.

Similarly, Steve and Cheryl Paquette didn’t think when they signed up son Adam for drumming lessons that they’d be sitting inside the K-Rock Centre watching their son run through a sound check.

“I never dreamed it would come to this,” Steve Paquette recalled. “He took a real shine to it, and when he gets something in his mind, it’s focus, focus, focus.”

The Paquettes flew back from a vacation in Mexico just to see the show before turning right around afterward and head back.

Steve Paquette, who comes from a musical background, sensed that the band was a good fit even in the early days of playing Brandy’s nightclub.

“They had something right from the start, they really did,” the tanned Paquette said. “They gelled as soon as they met.”

In the Emmons household in Odessa, it was Jay, seven years Brett’s senior, who first took to music, signing up for guitar lessons with brother Dustin, who is two years younger. While Dustin lost interest six months in, the Emmonses said, Jay stuck with it and, soon enough, started his own band.

“Jay had a band, and Brett wanted to be his roadie all of the time,” Jim Emmons remembered. “He worshipped his brother.”

Jay found some success with his band Sauce, the Emmonses said, in part because of their son’s determination. He would constantly call bars and restaurants asking if his band could play.

“Jay is the catalyst. He’s always had a band, he’s always had a guitar,” Jim Emmons said. “He was shy in the beginning, but he fought his way through that and became his own frontman.”

After finishing high school, Jay Emmons went to school and earned a degree, then started his own successful business.

Brett, meanwhile, had a high school band, but it broke up when he headed to the East Coast for university.

As The Glorious Sons took shape, Jay continued to be the “driving force” with a vision in mind, his father said.

“The work that he’s put into this band has been phenomenal.”

As the band started to find its way, Jay set his own business aside, which, at first, made his parents a bit worried, Jim Emmons said.

“And then this thing just took over, and they kept making more ground,” he said. “And the more Brett wrote, the better they got and more songs.”

Jay, meanwhile, “never quit thinking about how he was going to make this band work,” his father said. The money made from gigs at Brandy’s and the like was socked away to pay for the band’s first EP, Shapeless Art, which led to them finding a management team.

With the band now touring across the country, Cindy and Jim Emmons go to as many shows as they can and try to co-ordinate tour stops with family visits in places like Calgary.

“It’s our life now,” Jim said.

Sitting in the green room at the K-Rock Centre, the Emmonses were probably more on edge than their sons about the show just ahead.

“It’s more that you’re just nervous for them,” Jim said, “and nervous for yourself just to get the night on. They just want to do well, and they’ve worked really hard just to get to this point.”